Hindu activists stormed an airport in central India and briefly shut it down Wednesday in nationwide protests over an attack a day earlier at a northern Indian shrine that forms the heart of a decades-old sectarian conflict. More than 200 slogan-shouting activists of the World Hindu Council broke past security officers to storm the domestic airport at Indore in Madhya Pradesh state, local administrator Vivek Agarwal said. Activists smashed a VIP lounge and sprawled onto the tarmac, blocking a New Delhi-bound flight for about an hour. Police beat them back with bamboo truncheons and arrested 40 people. Airport operations later resumed, Agarwal was quoted as saying by The Associated Press. Tuesday's attack left the six assailants dead and wounded three security guards at a makeshift Hindu shrine at a site in the northern town of Ayodhya. One attacker blew himself up in a jeep, tearing a hole in iron railings encircling the complex and allowing the five other attackers to enter the complex where they died in a gunfight with guards, police said. In New Delhi, police used tear gas and water cannons Wednesday to disperse hundreds of Hindus led by opposition Bharatiya Janata Party leader Lal Krishna Advani and who shouted anti-government slogans near the Parliament building. No one was hurt. Pakistan's government condemned the attack, and India's Home Minister Shivraj Patil said it should not affect the continuing talks between the nuclear-armed states. "There are only a handful of people who believe in terrorism. The majority believes in peace. We will not allow the intentions of the few people to succeed," Patil said.
